A Shadow World
by UnluckyAmulet
Summary: Cheshire's life has been filled with many diverging paths. Now, she needs to make a choice, one that she never expected would be hers to make. A reflection on the differing lines of Jade Nyugen. RedCat.


Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice.

* * *

It seemed to Cheshire that her life had always been made up of barriers to cross, invisible lines that defined every step in her strange, mysterious world.

Case in point, she wasn't always known as Cheshire. Once upon a time, she was Jade.

If she thought about it, that was where her first major line happened. The day she walked out, ran away from home and shed the surname Crock forever, like a snake shedding its skin. It was a weird feeling, jumping from one thing to another, crossing over from Jade Crock to Jade Nyugen, taking a path that would lead her far away from the house, away from memories of a childhood of steel and pain. At the time, Jade assumed she'd also crossed another barrier – she ceased to be a sister. The reproachful gaze of Artemis burned into her back, and Jade knew her sister would not forgive her.

She forced herself not to think about it.

Then, there was the League of Shadows. In Jade's opinion, it fit her like a glove. Hadn't she always been sneaking around in the darkness, avoiding dad, vanishing into the night? They didn't bat an eyelid at her young age and said that her talent for acrobatics and how she knew her way around a weapon "could come in useful".

They asked what they should call her, which made Jade pause. They didn't ask for her name, they merely wanted a title, an identifier for a recruit. They couldn't care less about who she was, where she had come from. All that mattered was the here and now.

Still. A fragment of a life she'd literally run away from floated to the surface of her mind, a fraying poster, faded with age -

 _"We're all mad around here."_

 _Glowing eyes and a gleaming grin, set in the face of a tabby cat…_

"Cheshire," said Jade.

And so she walked into the shadows. 

* * *

Paths intersect, of course. It's inevitable, given how many there are in life.

When Cheshire runs into Artemis again, after all these years, Artemis has grown up. And Cheshire can see that she's not the only one rebelling against Dad. Artemis always was a terrible copycat when she was little, and the thought makes Cheshire's lips curve into a smile behind that grinning mask. Her eyes linger on her sister's costume – most of it is all Green Arrow's influence but that plume of blonde hair pulled back in a tight ponytail? That's pure Jade, even though Jade hasn't worn her hair like that in years. Still, it suits her sister well, so she lets it slide without comment.

Cheshire gets away, of course. Artemis may have gotten bigger, but she's not quite a match for her big sister just yet. Not that it's really Artemis' fault – training with actual ninja just tends to put you ahead of most people.

However, this is the first time Cheshire/Jade's path has interwoven and the thought leaves her feeling peculiarly shake, as if something from her has been stripped clean away, exposing the raw insides. Cheshire is nothing if not professional, so she shrugs it off and gets back to work.

When she is finally alone, takes off her mask and her robe, the feeling, what it means, finally sinks in: Jade misses her sister.

Then something else happens – Cheshire meets Red Arrow.

He's serious and driven and honestly kind of a jerk, which is probably why he's so much fun to play with. He's the exact opposite of her in a lot of ways, the scowling hero to her smirking villain.

But oh, there's a fire there and Cheshire just can't resist fanning the flames, like a cat stalking its latest prey. And she knows that for all his bravado, his seething indignation and ego, that he likes the games too. The arrow pointed at her chest doesn't worry her at all, in fact it draws her in closer, because she wants to see how far she can push him until he lets go. Cheshire's always liked to play with her food before she eats it and Red Arrow is the most delicious thing that's passed her by in a long time, so is it any surprise she's drawn intractably to him? He's one of the few things that doesn't pertain to the League of Shadows, not relevant to her missions. He's something that stands apart from Cheshire's work, a recurring distraction that she welcomes with a witty quip on her tongue and a blade in her hand.

What she didn't expect was for things to go from a little fun in her grim, dark life to something considerably more serious.

But even Cheshire could admit that working for the League was getting to be a gamble she wasn't willing to take anymore. Especially now that the Shadows have lead her right back where she started – once again, Cheshire is back to hating her father, hearing his gravelly, patronizing voice in her ear, _Little girl,_ he calls her. She wants nothing more than to jam her blade into his throat and watch him fall to the floor at her feet. Yet for all her assassin training, all the distance she put between her past and future and abandoning her kid sister, she's still as powerless as she was when she was fifteen years old - her dad is still telling her what to do.

So when the time comes, Cheshire finds herself with a choice she thought she'd already made long ago.

It's not such a difficult one to make, really. When Sportsmaster reaches out a hand with wild, panicked eyes, it's not Cheshire who looks back at him and remembers all the 'training sessions'. It's not Cheshire who recalls the first time he made Jade fight Artemis, the panic in her sister's big grey eyes when Jade threw a punch straight for her, a black eye that lasted for days and made Jade's stomach twist every time Artemis looked back at her.

"JADE!" Sportsmaster shouts, like he's calling over a stubborn dog.

Cheshire slinks back. Though it's not quite the same as slitting his throat, the look on what little she can see of his face is priceless. She makes sure to take a good look, so she'll never forget it.

With Sportsmaster stuck and her little sister doing a great job of dealing with the bad guys, Cheshire steps back into the shadows and, much like her namesake, simply disappears.

* * *

She went looking for him, eventually.

Cheshire pretends it was because she was bored – life outside the League of Shadows moves at a considerably slower pace than in it. She pretends it's sexual chemistry and nothing more, because admitting she was lonely was somehow just too difficult.

And the curious thing, the most disarming of all, is that Roy can see through her. Most people are distracted by the mask, the acerbic tongue and the deadly grace of her body, a carefree assassin who can vanish into the night like mist. Roy knows that she is more than a mere shadow, and when his whole world is crumbling around him, she's one of the only people who can offer him any kind of solace. Cheshire won't say she's ever expected to be a source of comfort to anyone, but clearly there are still things about herself that she doesn't know, things that got lost somewhere along the way.

It's another night after a session with Roy that something happens, something that neither Cheshire or Jade were prepared for. It starts with a strange sensation of exhaustion. Typically, Cheshire keeps herself in good condition, mostly because it's been drilled into her head since she was old enough to walk that her body is a tool and needs to be in top form in order to perform well, though what on earth she was supposed to be performing at that age was a mystery to her. There's a heaviness in her limbs that makes her clumsy and out-of-kilter, like she's only just learning the mechanics of her own body. She's sore, too, a low-level stomachache she dismisses as the result of eating cheap food from a vending machine, but it doesn't go away.

It's only when she suddenly can't stomach even the most mildly pungent of foods and her breasts still somehow swell a cup size that Cheshire realises what's going on. The epiphany hits her like a blow from a hammer, almost knocking her off her feet.

Being the efficient type of person she is, she wastes no time in going to a drugstore to get what she needs. The simple task that millions of women over the world must do every day fills her with more anxiety than infiltrating a top military base does, and the thought makes her want to laugh out loud. Cheshire always was a little on the unconventional side.

Cheshire stares down at the little white stick in her hands. The bathroom feels boiling hot to her, more like a sauna than anything, and she stares down at the little window that will determine her fate. It seems laughable that something like this holds such a power over her, but it's merely telling her what's already there.

Then, appearing on the screen like an image in the center of a crystal ball, one thin blue line appears, then another. Her heart beating hard, the phantom feel of Roy on her body, Cheshire flips the box over in her free hand, scanning the instructions, even though she's already read them several times over.

 _If you see two lines, you are pregnant._

She is not surprised, yet she is somehow shocked. The box and the stick clatter to the floor, but Cheshire barely notices. She rests a hand on her stomach, almost reflexively, even though logically she knows that nothing will be immediately obvious just yet. For now, it's just a whisper, a hint of possibility about what might be. There's no question on who the father is, either. For months now, if not longer, it's been Roy. Only Roy.

Cheshire stands up and approaches the sink to splash water on her face. Her reflection doesn't look like her, somehow. She seems younger than she actually is, her face bleached of colour, a look in her eyes that she doesn't recognise. Has she really changed so much over the span of a few minutes?

But of course, Cheshire knows all about becoming something else, doesn't she? She's been doing it for long enough.

And now she has yet another decision to make. She slips on her robe, belting it loosely, unable to stop touching her still-flat stomach, imagining herself with a kid. Could she really raise an actual child? Her? The girl who left her own sister in the hands of Sportsmaster, the one who's been training to be a killer since she was a kid?

But then she imagines herself as a mother. Someone better than what her father tried to turn her into. Her mother, her sister, they're not bad people. Hell, Artemis is running by the heels of the Justice League, of all things. Who would have thought the daughter of an ex-villain and a member of the Light could go so far?

Cheshire hasn't been a great sister to Artemis. She knows that. If she's being honest with herself (and now seems like a pretty good time to start), the regret from it will never truly go away. But the kid's doing okay, at the very least. As Cheshire thinks of her sister, something comes to mind and a smile crosses her face as she glances at her reflection, hands smoothing over her belly.

"Lian," she says, testing it on her tongue. She likes it, it seems to fit, somehow. She doesn't know what the sex is, of course, but for some reason, her intuition says it's a girl.

And after she says the word out loud, Cheshire knows there is no going back and, what's more, she doesn't want to. She may not have much of her childhood to base any parenting skills on, or many ways of earning money that were legal, but she knows now that she won't give up her child for anything.

She leaves the bathroom after some time and picks up the phone with only slightly-trembling fingers. The number flashes up onscreen and Cheshire raises it to her ear. She won't tell him over the phone, because Roy's in a volatile state as it is these days and this news is too important to take place over clipped electronic lines. But she can at least warn him she's coming – it's more than she's ever had when it comes to the world changing on a dime.

"Hello?"

His voice is familiar to her, muzzy as it is with sleep and something in Cheshire's chest clenches. She looks at herself in the mirror as she speaks, knowing that whoever she is, this will be a constant – her daughter.

 _"Roy, it's me. It's Jade."_


End file.
